Movie Magazine International Blog

By Moira Sullivan Joanna Scanlan and Lily Newmark in "Pin Cushion" The 40th edition of the Créteil International Women’s Film Festival ended on March 18 after a 10-day run that began on March 9. The palmarès - awards - were given out on March 17. This festival was outstanding in many ways. The films selected by programmer Norma Guevara were excellent and nearly every screening contained a film of high quality. One of my favorites was T he Road Forward , an innovative musical documentary directed by Marie Clements, on Canada's First Nations activism and history going back to the 1930’s. The stories are told by Native brothers and sisters who are artists and performers that reveal their strength and experience in a dynamic film form. The Prix du Public - "Public Prize" went to Pin Cushion by Deborah Haywood from the UK –a story about a teenage girl and her mother Lyn. They both move to a new town for a fresh start, but Iona falls in with the wrong crowd...

By Moira Sullivan Delphine Seyrig in "Jeanne Dielman" The 40th edition of the Créteil International Women's film festival opened on March 9 for a 10-day run. Guest of honor is the German director Margarethe von Trotta whose films have been extremely important to feminists and have screened at Créteil in the past years - such as The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum    (1975) with co-director Volker Schlöndorff , The Second Awakening of Christa Klages    (1978),  Marianne & Juliane   (1981).   Rosa Luxemburg (1986) wasn nominated for a Palme d’Or and winner of the best actress award for Barbara Sukowa and Trois soeurs    (1988) was also nominated for the Palme d’Or. More recent films by von Trotta include Rosenstrasse   (2003) - and Vision  (2009) - on the German nun Hildegard von Bingen. Her most recent film   Hannah Arendt   (2012) is about the political theorist. Both von Bingen and Hanna Arendt were played by Barbara Sukowa. At the Cannes...

One of the twins comforts Chloé in 'Double Lover' By Moira Sullivan Double Lover premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, a narrative by François Ozon starring Jérémie Renier who doubles as twins and Marine Vacth as his lover. In the space of 30 years two films with the same premise based on novels written by women have captured the public imagination. As Godard says, we don’t create for ourselves but for consumers. Since one of the twins is a misogynist and psychopath and the other "a kind of nice guy", were these two novels trying to create a perfect man by taking the bad boy out? Two famous male directors have selected this theme,  "twins" – one from Canada and the other from France who are delighted that there is a bad boy to be discovered which makes for a perfect thriller. It does not matter that women are deceived,  intimidated and physically assaulted, it’s part of why this kind of suspense thriller works. But is it a film that you ...

By Moira Sullivan Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf in LadyBird Saoirse Ronan gives an unforgettable performance as a young Sacramento woman from valley Catholic high school about to graduate and go on to college. The film directed and written by Greta Gerwig is nominated for best picture and screenplay at the Golden Globes next month. Lady Bird film has inventive and realistic dialogue with an engaging plot development. Credit must be given to the outstanding ensemble cast of the principle character Saoirse Ronan as Christine 'Lady Bird' McPherson, and Laurie Metcalf as Marion McPherson and Tracy Letts as Larry McPherson, Lady Bird’s parents. Both Ronan and Metcalf have received Golden Globe nominations for their acting roles. It is their relationship that provides a dramatic tension that gives the film its luster. The opening scene shows Lady Bird and Marion on the way home from a trip where they were scouting colleges which demonstrates growing tension in the...

By Moira Sullivan Jessica Chastain holds her own in a sea of male gamblers. Based on the memoirs of by Molly Bloom and screenplay written by director Aaron Sorskin,  Molly’s Game is one the best films of 2017 with two nominations for the Golden Globes next month as, best adapted screenplay, and best actress Jessica Chastain. Incidentally along with the report on Lady Bird set in California’s capital on this week's show - Chastain is from Sacramento California. Although she has recently been playing films as a woman in the midst of powerful men that can hold her own as in Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and Miss Sloan from last year,  Molly’s Gam e is her most virtuous effort. When Molly Bloom took a serious tumble in competitive skiing, her career as a professional athlete came to an end. With her name and reputation, she went on to create a high stakes poker game under her own rules and conditions. We discover this at the beginning of the film when she has been arrested a...

By Moira Sullivan Henry Baur as Père Noel In Italy, December 13 is the day St. Lucia is celebrated who was murdered in 304 AD for refusing to be married. Her death on the Julian calendar was closer to the Winter Solstice on the darkest day of the year, but the Nordic countries kept the date when the Gregorian calendar was later adopted and solstice fell on the 20th of December. Lucia has long been celebrated in Sweden with a tradition of selecting a woman with candles in her hair to lead a procession of maidens, star boys and gingerbread children who bring forth the light. In San Francisco, a French noir Yuletide double feature is being shown at the Roxie Theatre on December 13– L’ASSASSINAT DU PÈRE NOEL (Who Killed Santa Claus - 1941) by Christian-Jaque and LE MONTE-CHARGE by Marcel Bluwal (1962). Both films could hardly be claimed to be light entertainment and as crime fiction are associated with noir. The films do not evoke warm fuzzy feelings for Christmas but are dark an...

China (Chloe Grace Moretz) sits on 'Daddy's ( Louis CK)  lap.  By Moira Sullivan I Love You Daddy is a film by Louis CK that unless you saw it in Toronto at the festival in September or are traveling to Denmark in January, you probably won’t see it. The film’s popularity has plummeted in a downward spinning spiral since allegations were waged by actresses against Louis CK for sexual harassment and distribution has been scrapped. There is an ongoing discussion about if it is possible to separate the artist from the art, the filmmaker from the film, as in the case of Woody Allen and Roman Polanski, two directors criticized for sexual misconduct. How to enjoy the art, not the artist predator? Is all that art lost, tainted? Ironically, it is Woody Allen, Ronan Farrow's father and Roman Polanski, the director of his mother Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby  that have dodged accountability for the questions that are now acutely relevant  Ronan Farrow’s exposé in t...

By Moira Sullivan Dr Bahman Maghsoudlou, an Iranian American who is a film scholar film critic and filmmaker wrote Grass: Untold Stories published in 2008 on the making of Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life , a silent documentary filmed by Merian Cooper, Ernest Schoedsack and Marguerite Harrison in Iran in 1924. The documentary is about the Bakhtiari migration in search of grass from Angora to their lands in Persia. The Bakhtiari migration in search of Grass is an arduous trek that took place in Persia. The filmmakers followed the trip in particular the young Lufta and his father Haidar Khan – with 50,000 of his people and animals that crossed the Karun River – some on blown up goatskins, others on rafts, particularly the goats Grass: Untold Stories is an extraordinary document about Merian Cooper, Ernest Schoedsack and Marguerite Harrison and how their lives intersect. Cooper was a combat pilot in France who was shot down and captured in a Russian prison. He reached out f...

By Moira Sullivan Beginning right after Halloween is the continuation of the by now legendary series in San Francisco at the Roxie Theatre: The French Had a Name for It - 4,  with 13 examples of film noir from France.The series is presented by Midcentury Productions and curated by programmer Don Malcolm. That is 4 days of Noir from November 3-6, 2017. Malcolm is interviewed later in the show for the noir series he has brought to life lauding the laurels of forgotten French films – films that were absorbed and cast aside when the French new wave came along with film critics turned filmmakers, such as Jean Luc Godard and François Truffaut. Malcolm tells us about how this was a hybrid period where the noir predecessors influenced the new wave who used some of their style – their mise en scène – lighting, setting, characters, sound and camera angles. France did not have a blacklist period as in America so a director like Joseph Losey associated with the American film noir...

By Moira Sullivan Dr Bahman Maghsoudlou is an Iranian historian, filmmaker, scholar film critic and producer. His most recent film Razor’s Edge: the Legacy of Iranian Actresses , (2016) is about the role of women in the Iranian film industry before the Islamic revolution (1979) The film was shown at the recent  Iranian Film Festival in San Francisco  in September ( Bahman, who lives in New York,  was able to take questions from the public via Skype.) Magsoudlou's films have been selected for more than 100 major film festivals. The documentary begins with information about the history of the Iranian film industry which employed 10, 000 workers including 100 actresses before the revolution. After this, the government banned 90% of pre-revolutionary actors – especially women. The devastation to the film industry and to the actors was far-reaching including loss of employment benefits and housing. Were it not for this important film by Bahman Maghsoudlou...